Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tuesday August 01, 2006 @12:29AM
from the tall-orders-to-fill dept.

An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com is reporting that four countries have together ordered 4 million low-cost, Linux-based laptops from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. The countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each placed the 1 million unit orders."

How was the parent post racist? Race wasn't mentioned, Nigeria was. Most of the 419 scams I've seen did in fact originate in Nigeria ("419" refers to the Nigerian penal code, remember?) and if their government/society can't or isn't willing to do more to curb these scammers, then they deserve the ridicule they get.

No, my friend, I'm sorry. No one deserves any ridicule any more. Kids don't fail, they have deffered success. Scores aren't kept at soccer or baseball games. We live in a world scrubbed clean by the PC bleach that we have been force-fed over the past two decades.

So please, a little love for the Nigerians, who, just like everyone else, were at some point harmed due to something that I as a white christian male did, and are thusly kept down and deserve the same

If we all rely on ourselves for our well-being, as the "idiot libertarians" preach, then those who are less directly powerful lose to those who are more powerful. We're all very well aware of this, but a lot of us choose to ignore it.

If we all rely on each other for our well-being, then those who are less manipulative and charismatic lose to those who are more manipulative and charismatic. We're all very well aware of this, but a lot of us choose to ignore it.

All extreme competition and extreme cooperation do is change the fitness criteria for the population; either way, you'll get assholes exploiting the system. All you can really decide is what KINDS of assholes you want exploiting the system - and if you're smart, you pick a system that you're more likely to exploit than be exploited by. But then, if you're capable of making that choice, you're generally either powerful enough to be just fine with the way things are now, or you're in the middle of a violent coup d'etat.

Summary: In a libertarian ideal, man exploits man. In a socialist utopia, it's the other way around.

but really, do they expect everyone to have eletricity? I hope their sending Solar Panels as well.

Assuming this is the same project mentioned in last month's Wired magazine, the laptops can be recharged using (among other things) physical labor (i.e. pulling a string, similar to how you start a lawnmower).

Really, sending something more practical like the parts to build a power plant, or tractors to grow food...might just be a better idea than a laptop

Seems like the World Bank has been trying things like that since the 1960's, and in many cases they didn't improve the situation much for anyone other than the government in power and their cronies. So why not try something new? Perhaps the problem has been that the things that would seem practical to a naive westerner aren't so practical after all.

We'll see what happens -- either these laptops will make a difference, or they won't. But don't be so quick to cast judgement on a program you don't know very much about. It's not like MIT is just jumping into this on a whim... they've given it several years of thought, and consulted with many people familiar with the areas they are trying to help.

Ehhh, 1M computers for 1M dollars??? Forget about the factor 1.5x built cost. I guess you forgot some zeroes here and there. On my little calculator 1 million $100 computers is still 100,000,000 dollars.:-)

Ehhh, 1M computers for 1M dollars??? Forget about the factor 1.5x built cost. I guess you forgot some zeroes here and there. On my little calculator 1 million $100 computers is still 100,000,000 dollars.:-)

Only if they are clueless. Frankly, I'd be scared shitless that I'd have to deliver 1,000,000 computers for $1,000,000 when they costed me $1,500,000 to build.

Ignoring the grammar, and the factor of 100 you're presumably out; where in TFA does it state the delivery price? The "$100 laptop" is a slogan, as much as "one laptop per child", not a catalogue price. When it comes to drawing up contracts, the actual numbers will reflect real costs. Negoponte has already said the first generations will likely b

Is that the sound of a non-profit organization [wikipedia.org] selling laptops at cost? These people will probably make passable salaries courtesy of the organization, but these are not going to be multi-million dollar CEOs and CTOs. Their only major gain here is possibly the minor fame that comes with starting a project like this. In fact, I think most of the companies involved are selling the parts are near cost. The fact is that everybody wants to get a choke-hold on emerging markets (the same markets that these target); but even if that happens for AMD and the like, I don't think Negroponte or any other "owner" is going to be exploiting starving children or their poor governments in order to buy shiny red Ferraris.

Actually, the major gain will be that there will be four million installs of Squeak in the wild suddenly. Not only that, but there will be four million people learning Smalltalk as their first programming language. Considering that the entire Squeak environment was written by ten people, if even half a percent of them go on to contribute to the project this could have a huge impact. At the very least, we are likely to, once again, have a generation of programmers who realise quite how primitive developer

Well, lets put a few percent (out of four million users who may take up programming) at 3%. Then we can say that only a few percent of those will take up squeak (another 3%, just to make the math easy). That still leaves 3600 new squeak programmers, with even more coming if the numbers stay consistent as more of these laptops are purchased. Even then we are still assuming that nobody will have to share a laptop.

I really like that these countries have the determination to use linux laptops to help increase there education levels, it will benifit everyone. In the short term the production lines get busy making the laptops ready to be uses, and it will promote using open source software and Linux which could mean more and better tools out there for us eventually. But it could also breed us more scammers, damn them wasting so much of out time.

4 million is a huge number of laptops. It represents about 10% of the annual worldwide laptop shipments. If these shipments actually occur in a reasonable timeframe it would have a massive effect on the worldwide computer market. It would effect component prices for OEMs. Imagine the headlines as Red Hat grab a larger proportion of the laptop market than Apple.

I'm a mac and pc user. I'd be very happy to see another operating system grab marketshare overnight. It might show end users and companies that they can run something besides Windows! It may encourage competition. Microsoft could use a real dose of competition right about now. Everyone would benefit.

This may be what all of the linux users have been waiting for. It can prove linux is a desktop os as it was intended to be. Apple may get sales out of this too. (more interest in alternatives)

That is exactly my concern. These people will have a choice between gaining literacy and skills, and maybe starting businesses to further their local economy, or gain literacy and skills to spam and scam once they learn that the rewards outweigh the risks for them.

And we thought there were a lot of spam, AdSense blogs and phishing now. Wait until x% of four million new computer users catch wind of a way to get their hands on more USD than is open to them via legal means.

These people will have a choice between gaining literacy and skills, and maybe starting businesses to further their local economy, or gain literacy and skills to spam and scam once they learn that the rewards outweigh the risks for them.

How is this different from any new people anywhere in the world?
Or is it just all those shifty, foreign people in developing nations you suspect as criminals in the making?

Interesting fact: the US (the world's richest nation) accounts for the majority of all spam, at 23.2%. "These people" have more to fear from the the outside world than you do from them.

But of course you're right. Let's keep the internet safe for the gullible rich, and out of the hands of wily poor people who, as we all know, have no morals and want to take our money. Keep 'em backward and ignorant I say.

What's next? Outsource to malnourished kids. All they get is a little cookie (or several, depending on their privacy settings.) You can pay them even less than the Indian & Chinese programmers since these kids don't need money for food. They can just eat the cookies without getting any cache.

Is it just me or won't this mean Linux gains a significant user base that basically never have used anything else than Linux and will never have any reason for using anything else? This must be a big thorn in both Microsoft and Apple's (remember they offered to give away software for this project) side...

Because everyone knows when it comes to really cheap computers Apple is right there as a market leader.

Sorry but no, Steve Jobs offering OS-X for free was nothing but a kind gesture. His product is so out of range of the audience who would have gotten these machines it would be very hard to imagine any generated sales. Unless the project is super succesfull and instantly gives these kids western style incomes. Upper western style incomes.

Windows is an entirely different matter. MS has near dominance of the computer OS and 4 million new users who use non-ms software is nasty. Not horribly nasty but MS is often claimed to keep its dominance because it is dominant. In short you have to use windows, because everyone else uses windows. If everyone else doesn't use windows. Neither do you have to use windows.

It is the reason MS doesn't come down all that hard on piracy and is so willing to offer cheap (by western standards) versions of its OS in high piracy areas. MS rather loose a billion in sales then loose its dominance. Munich showed that MS is basically willing to give its software and services not just away for free but actually offer money on top of it just to make sure some other OS is not used.

Apple competes on quality, MS competes by being the only game in town. Oh and don't forget that linux users will have little difficulty switching to OS-X wich is after all based on that linux wannabe BSD./me runs for it.

Just because it has an x86-type processor doesn't mean that it will have the old IBM PC addressing schema..... in fact, there are good reasons not to. Separate I/O and memory buses went out with the PDP-11. Lump all I/O and the framebuffer into regular address space, then have the real memory addressed in contiguous pages. Display generation and DRAM refresh can then be done by the CPU itself with only a slight speed penalty (think '80s 8-bit machines, but with enough RAM for a fully bit-mapped screen

This is a pretty interesting idea, I think.If you're going to turn out a few million identical machines to people who don't have a whole lot of backwards-compatibility requirements, you can suddenly do a lot of things that mainstream PC manufacturers can't. I'd really like to see them blank-slate design the architecture, within the requirements of cost (i.e. using off-the-shelf parts).

I guess the only problem is that you don't want to stray too far from 'conventional' PCs, because you want the experience th

If the designers of these systems have done their work well, I hope these kids won't see any Linux (ls, vi, etc.) at all. I expect that that's all hidden below an appropriate GUI. What remains a winning point of course is that they are not confronted with a green-hill-blue-sky landscape during their first computer experiences.

actually I believe the idea was to get the kids to actually teach themselves and learn about the real operating of a computer. I'm sure the linux stuff will be there (as well as the GUI). I imagine that they will have the option to go wherever they want with it.

Some estimates of Linux desktops are around 30 millions. 4 million more in the coming year or so is a big relative increase. I expect many countries will wait a bit to see how these machines work before jumping in. It could start a fire.

In my part of the world, Canada, I have gone from installing a few GNU/Linux machines each year to doing 150 next month. At about half the cost of Windows, per seat, if the project works out (I do not see any obstacles), other schools and school divisions in my area are lik

Each of those countries has more than 1 million children. In order to fit their "one laptop per child" criteria, there will be a lottery. The winners get the laptops. The losers get to choose a method of execution.

Well this follows the/. story [slashdot.org] on skepticism for OLPC in India. Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and Nigeria are all substantially more wealthy than India on a per capita basis. India (with a lot more help from the industrialized world than it is presently getting) needs to focus on providing things like basic vaccines for all children. Laptops don't help children who are dieing from measels for lack of vaccination. Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and Nigeria all have enough money to provide some basics like vaccines. These are not countries where large scale famine is a great threat. These four countries have a substantial level of economic development and government services. This is not to say the implementation of public health strategies and other much-needed services in these four countries is ideal.

It could help the parent of said child know that the child has measles and get them to the hospital.

This is not the US we are talking about here. Recognition of disease is not the problem. People can't just hop into the family car and drive the kid to the hospital. Poor people who make up the majority of South Asia have no cars and few hospitals. Medical care is extremely limited. Having laptops doesn't solve people's basic needs. Vaccination and antibiotics do help and are much needed. This is the probl

This matches my original point. Countries such as Argentia and Brazil in contrast to India and Bangladesh have established health care systems and can spend money on other priorities such as OLPC.

On the divergent topic the US is not a good representative of how medicine is handled in 'developed countries.' Most wealthier nations have a state-based universal health care model. This is true for all of Western Europe I think. These state based models are never perfect, but few countries think that the US sys

Now this would be a nice toy for my own daughters (says father, who wouldn't mind taking this thing apart). Too bad they don't take orders below one million pieces.

Considering the low specs of this thing how about releasing the distribution and libraries that will run on this? It should be trivial to build a VM that allows you to play with developing software to run in this kind of environment.

To ensure that this project doesn't flop right from the start -- I presume that they would like people to develop some software for it.... (visions of US$ 100 doorstops all over Asia)

Now this would be a nice toy for my own daughters (says father, who wouldn't mind taking this thing apart). Too bad they don't take orders below one million pieces.

I seem to recall reading that they do. It's just that it'll cost you three hundred bucks. (That's 100 for the laptop, plus the cost of two more which will be used to send laptops to families that couldn't afford one).

The distribution and libraries are all open source, published and out there - and there's already a simulator which can do things like the dual-mode screen. Have a hunt around their Wiki [laptop.org] - particularly the software section [laptop.org] for you, I'd guess, and you should find everything you want. People to develop software for it is exactly what they want and need from us - go ahead, jump in!

Last time cheap laptops went on sale/given away there were so many rioting and fighting people that several were hospitalized. I wonder how a 3rd world country would deal with giving away these laptops, and how long they'll stay in the hands they are given to.

That is good news but there are still lots of challenges to this. I remember reading that they need 10 million to even be able to produce them. They are still a long way off.

Now I am usually an optimist and i do believe that the OLPC project is at its core a good project but the competition is heating up with China, AMD and Intel with their own programs and china's project being almost competitive on price. Also the OLPC project relies on AMD and indirectly china's production capabilities to make it a reality.

Also in my opinion (and mine only - don't want to start a flameware) it is too much of a one man crusade. I think that there is way too much emphasis and publicity surrounding Negroponte and what he thinks that people (like me) will start to wonder if this is really a group effort or just one man's dream. There are times that the distinction between non-profit and corporation are blurred and the line between philanthropy and publicity are not clear.

However I think idea is sound and I think that the OLPC project has served notice to corporations that there is a very underserved market that can further the adoption of computers and thus overall help everyone out (like the Intel's and AMD's of the world). I think that a few years from now the lasting legacy of the OLPC project may be the fact that it spurred companies to serve this market.

And regardless of what people may say about computers and learning it does let me slack off and post on slashdot all day so they can't be so bad.

Even if we assume that the corruption which normally gets in the way of everything in countries such as this will not be a factor this time, I don't think these computers will make a bit of difference in these countries. Computers require both infrastructure and previous basic education to make them worth anything. Just handing a computer to somebody who doesn't have the background to understand the tool's context isn't going to make any difference. Some people seem to think that computers somehow make peop

Well, I live in Argentina, so I can tell you what the situation is like here. There are people with a lot of money, that own towns or entire provinces (most of those ppl are in the goverment, that's obvious), people with a normal economic situation, who can buy a house or two, have a computer (or 3, as I do) and a car, and there are poor people.
That plan is going to work, not for all the children, but for a small quantity. I think that plan is going to work, partially, but it is going to work.

My guess is that for 99% of the children in these countries, the laptops will be totally useless, because what those kids really need is food, a clean source of water, and (especially for the girls) a chance to go to school and become literate. On the other hand, it's possible that 1% of them will really be helped, and among that 1% might be some of the future Bachs and Einsteins of the world.

Just because we're outside the US doesn't mean we aren't enough intelligent to operate a computer.
Well, they have food, a clean source of water, a chance to go to school, they only need a teacher.

I am glad that this opens up opportunities for many children to learn about computers and grow up using them. All my life, I've had a computer around, and since everything is run by computers these days, it will do a couple things for those nations. Education of such a powerful tool will help them to get better jobs, and hopefully it will increase the market power for the countries.

The OLPC website says they will only be available to schools and governments. How will anyone ever develop software for it? Why can't I pay $200 for one and have $100 of that go towards subsidizing a laptop for some other kid?

Very valid point, strangely enought the first time I see this question here. I know I would want one just because it's a convenient machine, and I don't mind that it might be too much of a hassle for these people to organize per-piece sales, but that developers can't access it is really a big miss. Projects like this desperately need a boost from outside developers!

Come to think of it, the moment they have access to ebay you might be able to buy one from them;) Still, just know that you won't gain much f

I'd love to make a souped up version of this for OHS/DKR use: (Read about in May 2000 Popular Mechanics) "Cybiko Introduces First Handheld Internet Wireless Entertainment System At Toy Fair 2000"

US $149.00 The Cybiko system combines instant messaging, interactive gaming, email and personal information manager (PIM) capabilities in an all-in-one device.... Available in four translucent colors, Cybiko has a full QWERTY keyboard to compose messages, LCD display,.5 MB memory (expandable to 16MB), a high frequency transmitter and Vibration Alert feature. The unit measures 4.8 x 2.8-inches and weighs under four ounces making it light, thin and small enough to carry in a book bag, purse or shirt pocket.... With Cybiko, kids and teens can communicate instantly with others within a radius of 150 to 300 feet, depending on the environment, creating their very own virtual community.

Wow!

Imagine what we could have for $1000 by the end of this year by integrating technology that already exists:

And with a digital camera for fun and creation of educational how-to tutorials... (And on the spot news reporting...)

And remember that in five years this entire thing will cost US$100 each.

As an alternative, this could be a set of HandSpring modules instead: [Springboard]

Consider a couple of these souped up devices given to each village in Africa. Anyone with $1 billion for true development aid to 500,000 African villages? (This is just the cost of one unfinished dam or one shut down nuclear plant.)

Consider millions of these devices airdropped into Iraq and Yugoslavia -- instead of more expensive cruise missiles! Anybody got $1 billion to spend on ensuring democracy with a true defense against tyranny in those places? (This is probably what the U.S. military's spends on gas/oil for a month cruising the area...)

This is like a system I wanted to develop and deploy pre-Y2K just in case... But it still has much value in preparing for any potential (natural, political, economic, biological) disaster, as well as aiding the development of democracy.

It's somewhat like the wearable crystals described in The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon (available in his book The Golden Helix), although the one thing it lacks is easy self-repliaction...

Developing and then deploying this sort of device is the sort of thing the UN or a major foundation should fund (if they were on the ball). But luckily, there is hope from toymakers!

====

Anyway, glad to see six years later this is going ahead at that $100 price point (and developed by other than toymakers). My hat goes off to the dedicated people making this happen.

Actully, most the targeted countries have water and food already. its a sterotype that too many people buy into.the real reason for this laptop is to turn a second world country into one that interacts economically with the rest of the world. i really wish people would look closer before condemning the whole project, such ignorance.

trivia fact:
the term "second world country" actually refers to the members (now ex-members) of the Soviet Union. The first/second/third world terminology was popular during the cold war as a way to divide the entire planet into Us (god-fearing democracies), Them (god-hating commies), and All Those Really Poor Fuckers (most of africa, south america and the middle-east).
So, actually, I guess most of the laptops are going to the third world, though they're certainly not going to the most utterly impoveris

My guess is that for 99% of the children in these countries, the laptops will be totally useless, because what those kids really need is food, a clean source of water, and (especially for the girls) a chance to go to school and become literate.

To recap the responses to this kind of argument when it came up the last three or four times stories about the $100 laptop appeared on/.:

Not every child in poor nations is starving. Even the ones who suffer from some level of malnutrition can still benefit from education.

While most children in poor nations don't get as much education as they should, most get some. Most of them would love to learn to use a computer.

Until and unless you follow through with your ideas, don't complain about people who follow through on theirs.

Also, did you notice the part where the governments of not one, but four poor nations are buying the computers? That would seem to indicate somebody thinks they will be useful.

Also, one should point out that without economic development in these countries, the problems of hunger and poverty will never be solved. And without some form of education and entree into the high tech world, that economic development will never happen. The ONPC project is aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty over the long term.

You're wrong. Part of the OLPC program is sustainability, so as the project scales up, there will be less and less subsidy involved. At some point the project will benefit from economies of scale and the goal of being able to make this laptop for $100 will happen.Let's stop using the term "Third World". It's not very accurate or meaningful, and in certain cases is completely wrong, i.e., China is not and has never been a third world nation since we began using the term. "Third World" is a vestige of 20th Ce

Btw, Argentina isn't particularly a poor country. They had a nasty financial crisis a few years back, but have been recovering steadily. Nor is Brazil for that matter. Of course poor people are poor just about everywhere, including here in the states. Perhaps this program might do some good here as well.

To summarize: mal/undernourished children don't learn for shit. Since they will only learn a minority of what you teach them, the majority of the money spent on teaching them is wasted.

"Few of us sufficiently realize the powerful effect upon life of adequate nutritious food. Few of us ever think of how much it is responsible for our physical and mental advancement or what a force it has been in forwarding our civilized life." - Robert Hunter (author of Poverty in 1904) wrote that in the introduction to John Spargo's 1905 book The Bitter Cry of the Children

This whole 'foreign countries are mud holes' theory that people like you in the US (you're in Cali, i did a little digging) share.

I am from Nigeria, and sorry to dismay your lively opinion of Nigeria and the other countries, but I did not live in a tent, hut, nor was my house supported with bamboo sticks.

I have been to Brazil and Argentina and it is the same as it is here in America, several cities bursting with industrial, urban life, and yes like a few places here in America (Central plains, deep south) ther are places that missed the technology bandwagon and could use all the cheap technology they can get (there are a lot of elementary school in the south that have no computers). My point being these are not third world countries, they are first world.

But back to the thread's main focus, this will be an ideal kick in these countries behind to help them catch up to European and Western countries. If 4 million computers can produce just one more person who can go to college and stand on his feet, then everyone wins.

Not all Americans have such a narrow vision of the world. A few of us have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel (as opposed to vacation in tourist areas) -- Sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.

the "world" terminology is largely irrelevant in the first place, its a purely social construct. In this case, I fully agree with Wittengenstein, meaning is how a word is used. The origin of "first world," "second world," "third world" as a descriptor for groups in the cold war is only significant in a historical context, it has come to refer to the relative economic strength of Nations. Generally, it refers to the value of GDP/(nation's population), those with a high value are "first world," those with

My guess is that for 99% of the children in these countries the laptops will be totally useless, because what those kids really need is food, a clean source of water

Gosh, I wasn't aware that poverty was endemic in Argentina and Brazil. I know it's too much to expect people to RTFA, but you could at least finish the summary before going into knee-jerk response mode.

But, let's assume that by 99% you mean 25% and we're just discussing Nigeria. It still doesn't make the OLPC program "totally useless". The thing to understand here is that just because the news channels only show you pictures from Africa when there's a drought or a famine, that doesn't mean that the entire continent is in a permenant, continuou state of starvation.

And yes, clean water and better educational facilities are sadly lacking in many parts of Africa. But that doesn't mean that clean water should be the only problem anyone is allowed to address. We can do things in parallel.

Four million kids, some of whom might never get a chance to see a computer, are going to grow up with marketable skills for the 21st century. They're going to get a chance to bring some money into their countries, and maybe get a chance to fix some of the other problems themselves.

You talk like most people in these countries (Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand) have never seen food in their life or something like that. What these (and other) countries need is not food sent from industrialised countries (which often hurts the local economy more than anything), its means to improve their own economy. This is done (partly) through improved education and that's where OLPC can help. There's no single solution to complex problems. You can focus only on food, just as you can't focus only on computers. But saying OLPC is unnecessary because there are other (possibly more important) problems is missing the point.

What I think most people are missing is this little thing called the internet. These things can make their own network and I suppose connect to the internet. For many people who had their computer ever disconnected from the net, hasn't it (computer) felt 100x less valuable? That's probably because it was, in a sense.

We don't need to count on future Einsteins, that's a plus. Don't underestimated the power of normal people with access to information. It's empowering. See the two USA Today articles below to understand my point (the ones with cell phones). A network is a useful thing indeed.

My guess is that for 99% of the children in these countries, the laptops will be totally useless, because what those kids really need is food, a clean source of water, and (especially for the girls) a chance to go to school and become literate.

Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand. Not Somalia, Bolivia, and Laos.

These are among the most economically developed countries on their respective continents. Hell, Brazil is a country that manufactures jet airliners that are operated by major U.S. airlines.

The computers are not going to naked starving kids in mud huts! These countries' governments know full well what it is that people in such circumstances (which all of the countries probably do have nonetheless) really need. They are likely going to cities which are relatively poor, but with a minimally sufficient economies, and working-class children (boys and girls) who would benefit most from education and the economic mobility it provides. And they've decided that cheap computers are the way to implement that.

These kids can't afford computers, and that's a problem. Because in the very cities they live in, people use computers every day.

It will also be interesting to see if free textbooks ever really get going in languages other than English. If they do, then it could really start being cost-effective to distribute them to kids on a computer rather than by dead trees.

It's not a question of "when"; in many towns in third world nations, a room with a bunch of old PCs and CD-ROM drives in it is the library, and there is a lot of open content available for them.

My guess is that for 99% of the children in these countries, the laptops will be totally useless, because what those kids really need is food, a clean source of water, and (especially for the girls) a chance to go to school and become literate.

If I see what 99% of the US people think of other countries, I would say they are in need of education as well. As it seems we must start with the people who teach others, you.

For somebody who teaches physics at Fullerton College you have clearly no grasp at what 99%

Like others said, these countries aren't third world and starved, but quite prosperous. The project is not aimed at helping only starving impoverished countries, but also helping countries that need to take the next technological step.

They have food and water (ever been to thailand? Food's the last thing they need help with), but they don't have access to technology.

A day's eating in Thailand can cost around $1. A good salary is anything over $200/month. Not much to you and me, but it's plenty for all of life's (biological) essentials there, including health care.

But $200/month limits people's access to technology. Sure, you can get broadband access and they seem to have more mobile phone shops than the rest of the world combined, Bangkok even has one of the world's largest computer shoping centres...but outside the cities, technology and salaries are more limited.

They come standard with wireless mesh and connection sharing, IIRC. The idea being that the school can get at least one of them connected, then they all are. Things they all need still only need to be downloaded once, then shared peer to peer over the much faster wireless connection, so it should be quite useful.

Still nothing on the $100 in food, clean water, shelter, and clothing per child project.

Right, because all possibly avenues for relief and charity dropped what they were doing to work on the laptop project.

Oh, and last I checked, Bob Geldof and Sally Struthers weren't making the world a better place-- and that $1 a day to "feed the children" doesn't seem to be doing much to provide for their future. Maybe a combination of current huminatarian efforts, with the access to education and knowledge that the laptop project will make possible could help some of these kids grow up to make their societies a better place.

And even so, you can give each family 100$ and they can eat for a month from that. That's what organisations have been doing for decades now and keep on doing. But there will be new children, uneducated, unable to provide for themselves, in need for medical care, food, clean water, shelter.

Are you going to give another 100$ for the next generation or a factor of that cause the past generation is still starving? OR would you ensure educatio

Unfortunately, our main man George W. Bush withdrew all US funding from foreign health clinics which advocate for or distribute birth control. So don't look to the US-of-A for any population control leadership any time soon.

* how easy is it for geeks meet women? Were trying to spread geekdom, right?* how much longer will it take these people to meet the opposite sex if they are laptop obsessed ?* now we just need some really involved mesh network games.* if they get educated, they will want to stay in school longer, and again delay reproductive activity.